An Socach

About An Socach

This An Socach sits roughly 5 km west of the A93 between Perth and Braemar, in the Aberdeenshire part of the Cairngorms National Park, and reaches 944 metres. Its shape is elongated and rounded rather than peaked, and the true top lies at the western end of that long crest - the 938-metre eastern summit shown as the high point on some Ordnance Survey maps is not it.

The name is usually traced to the Gaelic soc, a snout or beak, applied by analogy to a projecting place; other readings render it as 'the sow'. Approaches come in from Glen Ey to the north or from the top of the Glenshee Ski Centre to the east, the latter dropping into the Baddoch Burn on the way.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on An Socach (Glen Ey) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for Scotland — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in Scotland · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 56.902, -3.512. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is shelter cairn. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

Leica RX1250

Record revised

24-Oct-23

Drop measured from

NO079789 · 756 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

The An Socach group

One other listed summit sits in the same prominence group, with An Socach as the independent hill at its head.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks